‘Anonymous’ online activists see huge, unexplained surge in support amid Black Lives Matter protests

'There is something interesting going on'

Anonymous has seen a huge surge in support as protests against racial inequality sweep across the US.

The online activist collective has seen millions of new accounts follow its profiles and huge numbers of people sharing its posts.

But even the biggest accounts involved seemed confused by the new attention, which appears to have been partly supported by fans of Korean pop music.

In recent days, many of the biggest Anonymous accounts have pledged their support to protestors against police brutality and racism that began after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The tweets and Facebook posts in which it gave its support – as well as indicating that it would pursue action against police departments and others – have been seen millions of times, being repeatedly shared on both platforms.

That has led those accounts to receive an outpouring of messages of support, and a vast influx of new followers to the various accounts affiliated with the group.

Probably the most high-profile of the Twitter accounts affiliated with Anonymous, which tweets at the handle @YourAnonNews, posted to welcome its new followers – but noted that it was not clear why it had gained so many new people so quickly.

"Ok. We don't know why we got 3.5 million new followers, putting us at 5 million - but if you're new to our feed, and you're not a bot we can be pretty gruff. We don't mince words, we tell it like it is and when we want lulz, it upsets many people.

"Welcome aboard."

Gabriella Coleman, a research who has studied the group extensively, also tweeted to say that there appeared be something unusual about how many people were engaging with Anonymous accounts and posts.

"I will say that major accounts got millions of new followers, tweets are exploding, and so there is something interesting going on just on that front," she wrote in a tweet. In another post, she said that "something is up" with the huge increase in numbers that Anonymous were seeing.

Much of the increase appears to have been driven by accounts that usually post about K-Pop. One account usually devoted to Korean popstars, for instance, posted a long thread documenting the history of Anonymous which has been tweeted hundreds of thousands of times.

Others speculated that at least some of the followers and engagement may be from bots, though it is not clear why or how such a mass following would have come about.